- The UK is working with a local metals start-up, Alloyed, to develop a family of turbojet engines
- This new engine family will offer between 30 and 2,000 newtons of thrust
- Small engine development will allow the UK to fill an enduring capability gap, allowing the country to accelerate the production of UAS and cruise missiles in a time of crisis
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced it has rapidly delivered a new turbojet engine family with the help of Oxford start-up Alloyed.
While the thrust range of the engine family will vary between 30 and 2,000 newtons (N), only two – the 300N and 1,100N engines – have reached the production stage after seven months.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
These engines were designed and built in a digital twin environment which breaks the traditional economic and time bottlenecks in aerospace engineering. The digital advantage allows Alloyed to test the physics of the engine in a virtual space before printing it.
Likewise, the digital design can easily be upgraded with changes validated in a simulated environment.
Small engine demand
The sovereign engine family will reduce UK reliance on overseas supply chains at a time when militaries require small, low-cost propulsion for small uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).
GlobalData, a business intelligence company, projects the global UAS market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.4% in the next decade, expanding from $15.9bn this year to $29.4bn in 2036.
The global defence market is adapting to meet this demand. Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business and US engine builder, revealed it has moved from de-risking its new Valox engine family, which produces between 500 and 1,800 pounds (112-8,006N of thrust), to maturing the design.
Once a niche focus area, smaller engines have become necessary as militaries require affordable mass and a scalable engine design for larger aircraft.
Reliance on foreign engines
Although the UK is one of the world’s leading aerospace exporters, the MoD has maintained a deep and systemic reliance on specific engine niches from France and the United States.
The UK uses small and medium propulsion systems for its cruise missiles: Safran’s TRI 60 for the Anglo-French Storm Shadow / SCALP missile or the Williams International F107 for Tomahawk land attack missiles.
However, Rolls-Royce provides turbofan engines for the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Hawk T2 aircraft, and since 2022 the company has worked with Safran on an engine for the Stratus missile programme, which has split into rapid strike and subsonic types, which will require two distinct engines.
The point, however, is that Britain does not procure the scalable and low-cost capabilities it needs for asymmetric, contemporary warfare. In developing a scalable and sovereign engine family, the UK will be able to scale its production of systems in wartime.
